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Radio Waves: Paul Donovan: Blind to colour

When England won the Ashes last Monday, David Harewood — a star of Northanger Abbey, which starts on Radio 4 this afternoon — was glued to the climactic events at the Oval on Channel 4. I was listening to them on Test Match Special, which soared. Both gave you pictures, but they were of different orders. Television, when I switched over, proved that cricketers now have bleached hair and earrings. But TMS, on Five Live Sports Extra and Radio 4 long wave, had been my real, though proxy, companion.

Harewood, too, has good reason to be thinking about images. Today, he starts playing the hero in a Jane Austen novel, something that would be impossible on television, and not through any fault of his. On television, it would look odd to see a black actor playing the Rev Henry Tilney, a man of the cloth in 1790s Bath, just as it would